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How to keep a trading journal

Two minutes per trade and ten minutes per week is enough to see what is working.

For every trade

1. Market, long or short, date and time.
2. Entry, stop, target and size, ideally straight from your position size calculator.
3. Exit and result in dollars and in R.
4. Setup (breakout, pullback, reversal, range, trend, news).
5. Mistakes, if any: FOMO, moved stop, oversized, revenge trade, early exit, no plan.
6. One line on how you felt.

Every day

Before the open, write your plan: markets, levels, max loss for the day. After the close, review: did you follow it? What is one lesson?

Every week, five numbers

• Net P&L
• Win rate
• Average win and average loss in R
• Profit factor (gross wins ÷ gross losses)
• What your mistakes cost in total

The last one is often the biggest eye-opener: many traders find a single habit, like moving stops, wipes out a week of good trades.

See how the SizeGuard trading journal fills most of this in for you.